'DREADED' WEED WAR

A ganja gang war is gripping New York City and the suburbs, as posses of
high-living, gun-toting Jamaican drug dealers battle each other for control
of the region's multimillion-dollar marijuana market, police sources said.

This struggle for pot primacy among three major gangs - the Bloodstains,
Pelpa and the John Shop Crew - has left at least 12 shot dead and 20
wounded, and has led to roughly 100 home-invasion robberies over the past
year, cops said.

"It's a battle over three things: money, weed and power," a police source
told The Post.

The Jamaican posses' role in New York's street-level marijuana market goes
back decades - federal agents have long considered them "the most vicious
organized-crime group in the United States" who torture victims and
casually murder entire families.

But the recent battles have intensified as the gangs struggle to attain an
opulent lifestyle - complete with gold jewelry, diamonds and pricey
automobiles more associated with powerful cartel leaders than with the kind
of mid- and low-level pot retailers that most of the Jamaican dealers
really are.

"The Jamaican posses have been around a long time, but only more recently
they've been getting greedier - and more violent," said an investigative
source, who added that the gangs, which each have about 20 to 30 full
members, make about $100,000 a week.

The scope of the new war was revealed when cops charged a member of the
John Shop Crew with shooting to death a rival outside a Jamaican community
party on the West Side on July 23.

Victim Dane Plummer, 24, a member of the Bloodstains, was a dashing young
player in the city's pot-peddling scene, cops said.

Like many posse members, some of whom wear dreadlocks, he worked to affect
an image of affluence by making conspicuous displays of wealth, like riding
around in a $54,000 Cadillac Escalade, cops said. He was found shot dead in
the SUV's driver's seat.

Shooting suspect Kevin Fairclough was busted on Dec. 11 outside a Bronx
nightclub. Cops say the war has involved brazen robberies of dealers'
hideouts - which then lead to reprisals between the gangs.

Investigators say the gangs are responsible for 12 murders in the last 12
months, including the one in Manhattan, four in The Bronx, three in
Jamaica, Queens, two in Elmont, L.I., and two in Mount Vernon, Westchester.

"A lot of the shootings are retaliation," a police source said.

The Jamaican posses are the No. 1 wholesale and street-level pot dealers in
New York, according to a study released last month by the National Drug
Intelligence Center.

The center declared in a separate 2001 report that the posses are the "most
violent" of all drug gangs and were quick to turn to brutality.